Kanazawa "At Home at Ryokan Service"
Summer Holiday in Japan 2009 – Day 6: First day in Kanazawa
October 16th, 2009
Kanazawa is a city that we have chosen to test some aspects of traditional Japanese culture. In particular, we decided to stay for a night in an expensive but excellent Japanese-style hotel (Ryokan): The Takitei.
After travel of a little more than two hours from Osaka, we came to the modern JR station of Kanazawa, where we met our free guide and a very kind person of service “at Home at Ryokan” which has helped us with the luggage transport and later for use of available services in the hotel.
Our guide first accompanied us to eat in a sushi bar and then we reached by bus the Kenroku-en, considered one of the 3 among the best empire Japanese Gardens.
The garden is cared maniacally and is truly beautiful.
Adjacent to the garden there is a teahouse, where we performed the tea ceremony with the help of our guide who knew it perfectly.
The traditional green tea that we drink is a kind of tea enough dense that is good for the stomach: a must to try, especially the ceremony.
After a visit through the garden and a stop to a small Buddhist temple (in the inner of the garden), we visited the Nomura samurai House, an original structure that is worth to view.
Then we went to Takitei ryokan.
This Ryokan has some magnificent rooms and is located about 8 km from the city center. Takitei is all made of wood and has a public bath (rotemburo) overlooking to two waterfalls plunged into a small wooded hill.
Our room was facing a stream, and cherry trees with the background of a forest and hills.
The room was basically a small apartment, we had a traditional private onsen in the room with shower and bath water temperature control, the usual toilet with bidet electronic function, a cable connection to the Internet that we used with our laptop computer and the ubiquitous corner to make tea.
After wearing the yukata (you must be completely naked to wear it), which acts as a kind of kimono, we had a bath in rotemburo: I must say it is a strange sensation, but pleasant; certainly be done for limited periods of time because the water is 43 degrees centigrade!
Immediately after bathing, always with our yukata we went to dinner, where we were served a huge amount of bowls with genuine food.
In the evening, really tired, we slept on the futon.
The next day … in next post.
